For those who are home, and for those who are on the way. For those who support the historic and just return of the land of Israel to its people, forever loyal to their inheritance, and its restoration.

Monday, October 31, 2016

...The incident of course received wide media coverage, including from many of the UK’s prominent outlets such as the Times, the Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Independent, the Express, the Evening Standard and LBC. However, members of the BBC’s funding public looking for that story...

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
31 October '16..

As readers may be aware, a talk by an Israeli speaker at University College London (UCL) on October 27th, which was organised by CAMERA on Campus together with student groups from that university and King’s College London (KCL), was disrupted by anti-Israel activists. Members of the audience were intimidated and harassed and eventually had to be evacuated by the police.

“Police had to accompany Jewish students from a lecture hall at a London university after they were trapped by anti-Israel protesters. […]Officers entered the room and carried out an evacuation of members of UCL’s Friends of Israel group amid chaotic scenes.Demonstrators had entered the room to fly Palestinian flags and chant. The event was being live-streamed online and the disruption was clear on the video footage, with protesters banging on windows and screaming “Palestine! Palestine!”.”

A first-hand account of the incident can be found here. This latest pre-planned disruption aimed at closing down free speech for an Israeli speaker at a British university has been condemned by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and additional Jewish groups as well as by Sir Eric Pickles. The university has announced that it will carry out an inquiry into the incident.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

Sunday, October 30, 2016

...That's a lot of bad reporting for one Saturday from the wire service who employs as a reporter Nasser Abu Baker, the chairmen of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, the leading force for the boycott of Israeli journalists and media.

Weapons recovered from the "Mavi Marmara,"
which AFP identified as an "aid ship" though
it carried no aid (Photo from Israel Defense Forces)

If the flotilla had been a purely humanitarian mission it is hard to see why so many passengers were embarked and with what purpose. Furthermore, the quality and value of many of the humanitarian goods on board the vessels is questionable. There were large quantities of humanitarian and construction supplies on board the Gazze 1, Eleftheri Mesogeio and Defne-Y. There were some foodstuffs and medical goods on board the Mavi Marmara, although it seems that these were intended for the voyage itself. Any “humanitarian supplies” were limited to foodstuffs and toys carried in passengers’ personal baggage. The same situation appears to be the case for two other of the vessels: the Sfendoni, and the Challenger I. There was little need to organize a flotilla of six ships to deliver humanitarian assistance if only three were required to carry the available humanitarian supplies. The number of journalists embarked on the ships gives further power to the conclusion that the flotilla’s primary purpose was to generate publicity.

Earlier this month CAMERA's BBC Watch prompted correction of the identical error, and CAMERA has contacted AFP to request that the wire service likewise correct.

Moreover, while "Mavi Marmara" passengers were not carrying aid, they were carrying weapons and they used these weapons to violently attack Israeli soldiers who boarded the ship, facts entirely ignored in the 633-word article.

Middle East coalitions are also built on shifting sand dunes, and once again I warn those who make the decisions in Israel and outside it to steer clear of a love affair with the present-day stars in the constellation, from basing any long term policy on Middle East "coalitions" and especially from paying in hard currency - such as land - for a piece of paper just because the word "peace" is written on it.

A little over two years ago, in mid-August, I ended my weekly article with the following sentence:

"The Middle Eastern see-saw is leaning heavily towards the Saudi-Egyptian axis, but it is not at all clear whether that coalition will continue to direct the Middle East in another year or two. Israel must not be tempted to align its security and future with a temporary constellation, no matter how good it appears to be. Israel must always base its policy on long term planning that gives priority to Israel and its territorial possessions and not to agreements resting on the shifting sands of the Middle East."

Unfortunately, for the last two years Israelis and many others have been talking about the importance of a treaty between Israel and the so-called "coalition of moderate Sunni nations" - to wit, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, The United Arab Emirates, and the Palestinian Authority - all of them united against the Iranian threat and ISIS which threaten the stability and welfare of their regimes. There are even those who accuse Israel's government of not being wise enough to make use of the present situation in the Middle East to forge a peace agreement with the Arab and Islamic world on the basis of the Saudi Peace Plan adopted by the Arab League.

The foundation of the "moderate Sunni coalition" was the close cooperation between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, that began when King Abdullah, all heart and outspread hands, supported General Sisi, who in July 2013 ousted elected president Mohammed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, this in sharp contrast to the will of the US government and Europe. The Saudi billions saved Egypt from bankruptcy, and the cooperation between the two countries reached the point where Egyptian soldiers came to the aid of the Saudis in their struggle against the Iranian and Houthi forces in Yemen.

Except that since then, the sand dunes on which the aforementioned "coalition" was built have shifted in the wake of the north winds coming from the battlegrounds of Syria, putting paid to the bets on what seemed like a winning hand just a short while ago.Today the relations between Egypt and the Saudis are a far cry from cooperation and Egypt is now in close cahoots with Saudi Arabia's enemies, headed by Iran.

...If the Israel-haters cared so much about Palestinian Arabs having access to PayPal, they would insist that Palestinian banks cut off all ties to Hamas in Gaza. But I don't think they care that much. After all, these supposedly pro-Palestinian groups will never say a word against Hamas or terrorism. It hurts their credibility, you know.

Elder of Ziyon..
29 October '16..

The "US Campaign for Palestinian Rights" and other anti-Israel activist groups are now going after PayPal for not supporting payments to Arabs under PA or Hamas rule.

It is true - PayPal doesn't support payments to PA- and Hamas-controlled territories. But it isn't because of "discrimination," as the haters pretend.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...The Palestinians think their big historical lie will finish Israel off. In fact it could rebound on them badly and finish off their own cause – but only if Israel recognizes the opportunity it should now seize.

This week UNESCO doubled down on its shameful resolution erasing the historic connection of Judaism and Christianity to the Temple Mount, the holy of holies of the Jewish people, defining it instead as a “Muslim holy site of worship.”

For good measure, the original resolution also condemned the “escalating Israeli aggressions and illegal measures” against the department in charge of Jerusalem’s Muslim holy places and deplored “the continuous storming of Al-Aksa mosque/ Al-Haram al-Sharif by Israeli right-wing extremists and uniformed forces.”

This rewriting of Jewish history and religious belief amounts to a jihad of the lie. The false claims of Israeli aggression, projecting the Arabs’ own unceasing violence, cultural vandalism and terrorism over Temple Mount onto their Jewish victims, are incendiary lies which fuel murderous attacks on Jews and in which UNESCO has now made itself complicit.

Of all the disturbing issues of our time, the most fundamental is the collapse of the distinction between truth and lies.

When post-modern society decided that the notion of objective truth was bunk and so everything was relative, it also destroyed the idea of a lie. If there’s no such thing as truth, there can be no such thing as a lie. Everything becomes merely a matter of opinion.

These lies are also believed by many in the West. For while only some Westerners are consumed by anti-Jewish bigotry, most are no longer educated to distinguish lies from factual evidence. They are taught instead to afford equal respect to “competing narratives.”

Saturday, October 29, 2016

...the papyrus, like the many other proofs of Jewish history, stands as a rebuke to those who are, whether they understand it or not, seeking to go back to the pre-June 1967 status quo whereby Jews were banned from the Old City or praying at the Western Wall. It is also a reminder to Israelis and their friends that, although the Middle East conflict remains a complex and often-perplexing puzzle, the cause of Israel is fundamentally just. Justice may be an alien concept in the upside down moral universe of the United Nations. But it is not something that can be erased by a UNESCO vote.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu made a point of triumphantly mentioning the archeological find this week in his denunciation of the UNESCO vote. But while the timing of the two events ought to be particularly embarrassing for the Palestinians and their European and Third World enablers, it’s not likely that this will cause any of those nations that have stuck to their absurd position to change their votes.

After all, does anyone at the United Nations really doubt that Jerusalem was the capital of a Jewish nation many centuries before the Muslim conquest of the country? Or that Hebrew was the language of the ancient Jewish kingdoms? Do even many Palestinians think the site of the Temple Mount mosques isn’t where the Jews built both of their ancient shrines or that the Western Wall is not the last remnant of that structure? Not likely.

Friday, October 28, 2016

...With this being the third report concerning Palestinian and Arab abuse of the UNESCO forum for political ends that the BBC News website has produced in twelve days, it is by now very obvious that the corporation has no intention whatsoever of providing its funding public with the information which would enhance their understanding of this particular “international issue” – as its remit obliges.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
28 October '16..

The BBC News website’s reporting on the latest ignominious resolution concerning Jerusalem that was adopted by UNESCO on October 26th was to be found tagged onto the end of a report concerning an archeological discovery titled “Jerusalem reference found on ancient wine ledger“. Readers were told that:

“The discovery was announced on Wednesday shortly after the United Nations Organisation for Education, Science and Culture (Unesco) adopted a second resolution in a week that Israel said denied Judaism’s ties to Jerusalem.The resolution, according to copies seen by news agencies, mentions only the Islamic name for a key holy site in the city known to Jews as the Temple Mount and al-Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) to Muslims.” [emphasis added]

According to the Times of Israel:

“A draft of the resolution obtained by The Times of Israel on Sunday once again referred to the Temple Mount compound solely by its Muslim names, “Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif,” and defined it only as “a Muslim holy site of worship.”As the site of the biblical temples, the mount is the holiest place in Judaism. Unlike last week’s resolution, the draft likely to be adopted Wednesday will not mention the importance of Jerusalem’s Old City for “the three monotheistic religions.””

The BBC, however, was apparently incapable of informing audiences in its own words that such language does indeed deny the ties of Judaism (and Christianity) to Jerusalem, preferring instead to employ its jaded – and redundant – “Israel says” formula.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...Theirs is a culture that denies history and turns morality on its head by treating killers as role models. Palestinians believe it is unreasonable to ask them to give it up. But if their conflict with Israel is ever to be solved, that is exactly what they must do.

This statement reveals something that most peace process advocates and critics of Israel either don’t understand or willfully miss. The PA’s repeated refusals of Israeli peace offers isn’t rooted in how many homes are built by Israelis in existing West Bank settlements or differences over where the border between a putative Palestinian state and Israel should be drawn. Rather, the problem is something far more deep-seated: culture.

As poll after poll of Palestinian public opinion has shown over the years, support for violence against Israelis and Jews and the rejection of Israel’s legitimacy isn’t merely a policy preference or a position taken by the PA at the United Nations. It is rooted in a Palestinian political culture that views the Jews as having no rights to any part of the country, and sees violence taken against them is an act of patriotism.

Like his boss, Yasir Arafat, Khalaf’s role in history as the author of some of the most brazen and depraved terror incidents of the postwar era secured him a place of honor among Palestinians. Black September claimed to be distinct from the Palestine Liberation Organization but was, in fact, under Arafat’s orders. In that capacity, Khalaf planned the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre of Israeli athletes, a series of airplane hijackings, as well as the assassination of two American diplomats in Sudan. Like Arafat, Khalaf later posed as enough of a moderate to convince Secretary of State James Baker that he was someone that the U.S. should deal with. He was never held accountable by the U.S. for his attacks on Americans, let alone Israelis. And he was eventually killed by a member of the Abu Nidal splinter group as part of an internecine Palestinian conflict.

...Karp observes that the way to truly change policy in a democratic country like Israel is to convince enough Israeli voters to support your position. That's right. Not convince Washington. Nor the UN. Its convince Israeli voters. She is absolutely right.

Thursday, October 27, 2016

...This form of child abuse does not seem to bother human rights organizations or UNICEF, whose declared goal is to "work for a world in which every child has a fair chance in life and a right to survive, thrive and fulfill their potential..." UNICEF apparently does not believe its mandate extends to Palestinian children, who are exploited to serve the interests of Islamist groups.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
27 October '16..

Children have long become an integral part of "military" parades held in the Gaza Strip by various Palestinian groups. But this form of child abuse does not seem to bother human rights organizations or the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), whose declared goal is to "work for a world in which every child has a fair chance in life and a right to survive, thrive and fulfill their potential -- to the benefit of a better world." It seems that UNICEF does not believe that its mandate extends to Palestinian children, who are exploited to serve the interests of Islamist groups.

In the Gaza Strip, children are taught not only to hate Israel, but also to prepare themselves for jihad (holy war) against the "Zionist enemy." Hamas, the Islamic Jihad Movement, and other radical groups see children as future "soldiers" in the war to eliminate Israel. They raise children to regard suicide bombers and jihadis as role models.

Children in this world do not dream about becoming doctors, pilots or engineers. Rather, they dream of destroying Israel and "liberating Palestine." In fact, an entire generation of Palestinians, particularly those in the Gaza Strip, has been raised on the glorification of suicide bombers and anyone who kills a Jew. With enough sacrifices, they are taught, the destruction of Israel is not a far-fetched dream. They alone embody the future hope of the Palestinians to see Israel removed from the face of the earth. Forget becoming a physician: their job is to continue what their fathers failed to achieve.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

Next week will mark the beginning of the 100th year since the Balfour Declaration. On Friday, Nov. 2, 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour announced in a short letter to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild that "His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

Five years later, the Balfour Declaration was included in the League of Nations resolution to mandate Palestine to the British government, and another sentence was added to it: "Whereas recognition has been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country." Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, who, with the assistance of his colleague Nahum Sokolow, worked persistently and wisely on behalf of the World Zionist Organization to obtain the documents, aspired to a clearer commitment, but the modest version was still an important tier in building the State of Israel.

Arab leaders in Palestine opposed the Balfour Declaration as soon as it was made public. They protested the use of the terms "the Jewish people" and "national home" as well as the reference to the Arabs as one of the "communities" with civil and religious -- but not national -- rights. It is for these reasons that the Palestine Liberation Organization determined in article 18 of its 1964 charter, three years prior to "the occupation," that "the Balfour Declaration, the Mandate system and all that has been based upon them are considered fraud." In keeping with his organization's charter, PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas recently stated at the United Nations General Assembly (Sept. 21, 2016): "One hundred years have passed since the notorious Balfour Declaration, by which Britain gave, without any right, authority or consent from anyone, the land of Palestine to another people. This paved the road for the Nakba of Palestinian people and their dispossession and displacement from their land."

In the same speech, Abbas also demanded that Britain apologize to the Palestinians "for the catastrophes, miseries and injustices that it created" as a result of the Balfour Declaration. Two months earlier (July 25, 2016), Abbas, in a speech read at the summit of the Arab League, asked the secretariat-general of the Arab League to support him "in preparing a legal portfolio in order to file a lawsuit against the British government for issuing the Balfour Declaration and for subsequently implementing it in its capacity as a Mandate authority."

These statements, as strange as they sound, reach down to the root of the matter. In 1917, the U.N. partition plan for western Israel had not yet been suggested, there was no "Nakba," and "the occupation" of 1967 had not yet begun. The PLO's stance proves once again the depth of its opposition to the existence of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine, an opposition born of 100 years of denying the fact that the Jews comprise not only a religion but also to a nation and are reconstituting their sovereignty in their ancient homeland. In the PLO charter -- which is still alive and most definitely kicking -- contrary to statements made by interested parties -- this denial is stated in the clearest possible manner.

...If any of Abbas adviser's are reading this, and want to deny the claim, they're invited to please send us written evidence of the PA president's calls to his people to stop their blood-lusting violence, their overt and cold-blooded weaponization of their society's children, and their hunting for defenceless, civilian Israelis at bus stops, tram stops and shopping precincts. And for any Europeans reading this - congratulations! None of this could have happened without the tax money you pay to your governments who in turn send millions of Euros to Ramallah to enable Abbas and his henchmen to get away with murder.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
27 October '16..

The Times of Israel reported late last night (Wednesday) on fresh evidence, if any were needed, of how Palestinian Arab society appears to have hit bottom and continues to dig down:

Two Palestinian children carrying knives were detained outside a West Bank settlement, south of Jerusalem, on Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces said. “A short while ago forces identified and apprehended two Palestinian children under the age of ten near the community of Migdal Oz,” the army said. “During the initial questioning the children admitted to have been sent, armed with knives, in order to carry out a terror attack.” The two were spotted near the security fence. IDF spokesperson Peter Lerner said the pair were just eight years old... ["Palestinian kids, 8, detained with knives outside settlement", Times of Israel, October 26, 2016]

Photos of the two knives seized from the children are published in this morning's news. We did a Google image search of that image a few minutes ago; it appears, not so surprisingly, that interest in those weapons of murder and the children from whom they were taken, is limited at this point to the Israeli media. The Palestinian Arab news channel Ma'an has nothing about it in English at this hour (it's 9:30 am), but their Arabic site does have a brief report here; while it offers no reflections, analysis or commentary on what armed 8 year olds stand for in the larger view of things, it does include IDF security cam footage of the two children making their way in the dark to the outskirts of Migdal Oz.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...There is therefore all the more reason for the BBC – which claims to be impartial and is tasked with building audience understanding of “international issues” – to report stories which would help its audiences understand the real reasons for the counter-terrorism measures which include restrictions on entry to Israel from the Gaza Strip. One such story was recently cleared for publication.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
26 October '16..

The BBC’s portrayal of the reasons for restrictions on entry to Israel from the Gaza Strip is usually at best superficial and at worst misleading and politically motivated. Two months ago, for example, Yolande Knell made opportunistic use of a story about the rescue of neglected animals from a Gaza zoo for the promotion of a deliberately incomplete representation of those travel restrictions that made no mention of the factor which necessitates them: Palestinian terrorism.

“In Khan Younis at the Mahali [phonetic] family home, the children show me their plastic zoo animals and I tell them Laziz [the tiger] is moving to South Africa.”“Akram Mahali says daily life is a struggle. Neither he nor his six children have ever seen life outside Gaza and they’re not likely to any time soon. With Hamas in control of the Palestinian territory, both Israel and Egypt impose tight border restrictions and limit travel.”Voiceover Mahali: “There is nothing nice in Gaza. Really if I could I would take them out. I wish I could. There is no money, no happy life and there is no work. There are power cuts. I see now the animals are living better than humans.”

Knell closed that radio report with the following loaded statement:

“Then, just after dawn, the animals leave Gaza. Their suffering will soon be over but they leave behind Palestinians who continue to feel trapped.”

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

...Despite the fact that the BBC’s public purposes commit it to building “understanding of international issues”, its audiences have not been provided with the information essential for comprehension of the belligerent aims behind the serial abuse of UNESCO for anti-Israel campaigning.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
25 October '16..

On October 18th – four days after the appearance of a previous report on the same topic – the BBC News website’s Middle East page published an article which, after amendment, is now titled “Unesco passes contentious Jerusalem resolution“.

Like the previous article, this one too failed to provide BBC audiences with any of the relevant context concerning prior UNESCO motions and resolutions which have similarly erased Jewish history.

Readers were again not told of the repeated episodes of pre-planned Palestinian rioting on Temple Mount which have necessitated measures mentioned in the BBC’s report:

“It [the resolution] criticises Israel’s activities at holy places in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. […]The resolution repeatedly denounced Israeli actions, including the use of force, imposition of restrictions on Muslim worshippers and archaeological work.”

No factual information was provided to enable audiences to put the allegations made in the resolution’s wording into their correct context.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...This ingrained humanitarianism is what motivates Jewish leftists to yearn to commit ever greater acts of appeasement and self-denigration, accepting the misnomers of occupiers and suppressors of freedom anti-Semites apply to the Jewish state. Using our own good qualities as a weapon against us has become a modus operandi among leftists, here and elsewhere, Jewish and otherwise.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
26 October '16..

Jewish ethics impels us to help the needy and stand up for the oppressed. It is not supposed to set us up for disaster.

* * * * *

Jewish ethics and morality is something we can be proud of. We are instructed to pay attention to the needs of others. For example, it is a mitzvah (commandment) to leave the unreaped corners of one’s fields for the poor (Lev. 19:9), to love one’s neighbor as oneself (Lev. 19:18), to love the stranger/non-Jew (Deut. 10:19), and more. In fact, while only a minority of the 613 commandments concern how to treat others, in common parlance, the word ‘mitzvah’ is used to mean ‘doing a good deed’.

Our sages dealt at length with issues concerning our interactions with those around us. We are entreated to conduct ourselves with loving-kindness (Pirkei Avot 1:2), and instructed in the importance of truth and peace (Pirkey Avot 1:18).

Evidence of Jewish loving-kindness abounds. Whenever there is a natural or man made disaster and lives are at stake, property in ruins — there you will find Israeli humanitarian organizations, sometimes the first ones with boots on the ground. so to speak. There are non-Israeli Jewish organizations that send teams to these sites and many more provide the financial resources that make such missions possible. Sure, there are also humanitarian organizations from other parts of the world, some UN, some governmental, some Christian and perhaps some with other associations. But it seems almost like a Jewish ethical imperative that where help is needed, Jews are there.

We were there in the American Civil Rights demonstrations. We were there fighting apartheid in South Africa.

And here is where I think the Leftists started to lose their way. We have been used to joining up with the oppressed. We were oppressed ourselves and there was a sense of being in the same boat with other oppressed peoples. After all, remember that in the 50’s in the United States, admission to beaches and other places was forbidden to blacks, Jews and dogs. We were not part of the elite, part of the empowered, regardless of how many of us were educated, successful or wealthy. We were kikes or dirty Jews.

And, while it was a frightening position to be in, it was familiar — almost a genetic inheritance passed down from generation to generation.

And then a miracle happened. We pulled ourselves out of the ashes of Europe and out of the Middle Eastern and North African countries that no longer wanted us there and we regrouped in our ancient indigenous homeland. Here we rose up like a phoenix in the deserts and swamps of our sacred land and grew strong. We were no longer pitied. We were admired.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...Despite the unceasing waves of murdering innocent Israeli civilians, Western politicians speak as if Israel were not under attack. They are not interested in seeing the spilled blood, the threats, the hatred constantly spread by Palestinian newspapers, and the incessant and ugly consequences of that hatred....Israelis, however -- Muslims, Christians and Jews -- cannot practice willful blindness. The spilled blood is not an abstract headline; it is their red blood.

Guy Millière..
Gatestone Institute..
25 October '16..

The death of former Israeli President Shimon Peres led to a wave of almost unanimous tributes. Representatives from 75 countries came to Jerusalem to attend the funeral. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas even left Ramallah for a few hours to show up.

Such a consensus could seem to be a sign of support for Israel, but it was something else entirely.

Those who honored the memory of Shimon Peres put aside the years he dedicated to creating Israel's defense industry and to negotiating key arms deals with France, Germany and the United States. Those who honored the memory of Peres spoke only of the man who signed the Oslo Accords and who embodied the "peace process." They then used the occasion to accuse Israel.

Barack Obama delivered a speech that could have resembled a mark of heartwarming friendship, until he evoked the "the unfinished business of peace talks." A harsh and negative sentence followed, saying that "the Jewish people weren't born to rule another people." The next sentence implied that Israel is behaving like a slave-owner: "From the very first day we are against slaves and masters;" but it is clear to anyone in Israel that there is no such relationship even resembling that. His conclusion followed: "The Zionist idea will be best protected when Palestinians will have a state of their own."

British Prime Minister Theresa May and French President François Hollande issued press releases in the same direction.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

...“Palestine” demands that history be rewritten, that mathematics, chronology and logic all be redefined, or the EU and UN will pay an even higher price. If you on the other hand appreciate the value of history, mathematics, chronology and logic, make your voice heard. Get in touch with your MP or senator and demand that all financial and diplomatic aid to the Palestinian Authority be stopped.

Amazing, isn’t it? The “Palestinians” are so supremely self-confident, they are threatening the EU and UN.

Just remember that the “Palestinians” are the people whose entire economy is dependent on welfare payments taken away from hard-working EU and UN citizens and pensioners, and instead diverted to the Palestinians. Who in turn return the favour by giving the world anti-Semitism, terrorism, extremism, indoctrination. and ethnic cleansing.

But instead of the EU and UN threatening the Palestinian recipients with harsh consequences if they don’t stop their anti-Semitism, terrorism, extremism, indoctrination and policy of ethnic cleansing, it is instead the recipients who are threatening the donors with harsh consequences if they don’t get even more.

It’s a protection racket, with the EU and UN paying for the privilege of being bullied even as they empty their wallets.

The “Palestinians” demand UNESCO unanimously acknowledge that Islam, just 1438 years old, is nonetheless older than Christianity, which is 2016 years old, and even older than Judaism, which is more than 3000 years old. This despite the archaeological and written evidence that puts the Jewish First Temple at the site of the Temple Mount 3000 years ago, 1600 years before Islam was even born on another continent, in the sands of Arabia. That is to say 1600 years before Islam invaded the Jewish provinces of Judea, Samaria and what we today know as the modern State of Israel.

“Palestine” demands that history be rewritten, that mathematics, chronology and logic all be redefined, or the EU and UN will pay an even higher price.

...Palestinians insist that they are POCs, and expect solidarity from other POCs like American blacks. This is because “they are both colonized peoples” – so say the descendants of the Arab colonialists who swarmed over the Middle East and much of Europe, and of the traders that captured hundreds of thousands of Africans and shipped them off to the New World to be slaves! Interestingly the Movement for Black Lives doesn’t find this cognitively dissonant at all.

I admit it. When I see the expression “person of color” used seriously, I stop reading. It is an indication that the writer is a fool, and probably a knave.

What does it mean? It has been around since the 1790s, but only recently has gained its present ideologically loaded meaning of “person belonging to an ethnic group that is or has been enslaved, colonized, persecuted or insulted by people of European ancestry.”

There are implications that flow from the status of being a POC. On the one hand, a POC is seen to be fragile, needing to be protected from present-day “white” oppression or compensated for prior oppression. On American college campuses, POCs demand “safe spaces” where they can be safe from demeaning micro-aggressions that “white” students, no matter how high their level of racial consciousness is, cannot seem to stop committing. Reparations, affirmative action and other benefits are also assumed to be due to POCs in order to redress historical wrongs and to overcome existing bias.

On the other hand, POCs may express their rage at being oppressed in aggressive ways, and non-POCs are expected to understand this, and even accept it.

American intellectual circles are obsessed by the concepts of oppression and victimhood, having added everything imaginable to the mix in addition to color and ethnicity. Thus it is also possible to be victimized on the basis of biological gender or the practically infinite variations of gender consciousness or sexual preference; or on the basis of religion, age, disability, poverty or employment status. I am sure I’ve missed some. The ways the various forms of oppression interact is called “intersectionality,” so papers are written about precisely how much worse it is to be an LGBT POC than an LGBT white.

The problem is that there is nothing about a person that makes them a POC except that they feel like one. I’ll start by noting that there is no scientific basis for the concept of “race,” and that even if there were, it has little to do with who gets to be a POC. Who could be closer genetically than Israeli Jews and Palestinians? The average percentage of melanin in the skin of Israeli Jews is probably higher than that of Palestinian Arabs, but skin color has nothing to do with being a POC.

...Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was bitterly criticized by the Obama administration for saying that by demanding the dismantling of all Jewish communities in the West Bank as well as parts of Jerusalem, the PA was demonstrating that its goal was a Jew-free state. His assertion that this demand amounted to ethnic cleansing was blasted as unhelpful to the cause of peace. What happened in Efrat this past week showed how right he was.

What happened in Efrat, the city in the territories 12 miles from Jerusalem, was exactly what those who wish for peace in the Middle East say should be happening.

Palestinians were invited on Wednesday to visit the home of the mayor of Efrat to celebrate the holiday of Sukkot. The event was discussed in a Washington Post feature, which described a friendly gathering that demonstrated how people of good will could work to resolve differences. It also noted that some of the Arabs who were invited had declined to come out of fear that they would be seen as betraying the Palestinian cause. As it turns out, they were right. The next day the Palestinian Authority arrested four of the guests who attended the holiday celebration. As of Sunday, the four were still in custody and their families were seeking their release by publicly blaming the Jews for “tricking” them into breaking bread with their enemies. That’s the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a nutshell.

During the weeklong Jewish festival of Tabernacles, Jews invite their friends and neighbors to dine in their Sukkahs, the temporary huts intended to recall the dwellings the Israelites lived in after their liberation from Egypt during their journey to the Promised Land. So what better way to promote coexistence for the Jews of Efrat, a town just south of Jerusalem in the West Bank, than to have local Palestinians come to the mayor’s sukkah where they could drink coffee and get to know their neighbors better?

Monday, October 24, 2016

...The barbarians (and those who stand with them) have their ways and their values. And we have ours.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
23 October '16..

A year ago, a murderous Arab-on-Israeli terrorist attack in Jerusalem's Old City took the lives of two young Jewish men:

The two died of their wounds shortly after being stabbed in Jerusalem’s Old City by a Palestinian terrorist. Banita’s wife was in serious condition and their two-year-old baby was lightly wounded. She was taken to Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem and was undergoing surgery. The toddler was taken to Shaare Zedek Medical Center for treatment where he remained in stable condition. Lavi, a Jerusalem resident, leaves behind a wife and seven children. A rabbi at the Old City’s Ateret Cohanim yeshiva who lived nearby, he had rushed to the scene when he heard screaming in the street. ["2 killed in Jerusalem attack named as Nehemia Lavi, Aharon Banita", Times of Israel, October 3, 2015]

A year has gone by - twelve months filled with who-knows-what weighty challenges, unthinkable difficulties and corrosive, unfathomable, endless pain for the parents and families the two murdered Jews left behind.

In the conventional way of thinking about such matters, the minds of those irretrievably damaged family members are undoubtedly filled with thoughts of vengeance, of bloodshed and of evening the score.

That, at least, is how some ostensibly well-informed people view those of us who have been at the receiving end of Arab-on-Israeli savagery.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...In a piece this long, where the Times reporter obviously had firsthand interview access to Ms. Regev, why does the reporter need to resort to speculating about what the answer “would most likely be”? Why not just ask her the question directly and let her answer it? Ms. Margalit’s answer to that question would most likely be: she wasn’t really so interested in finding out the truth.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner.com..
21 October '16..

What happens to a New York Times journalist who gets caught blatantly violating the newspaper’s policies restricting the use of anonymous sources?

If the journalist happens to be New York-based writer Ruth Margalit, she gets rewarded with a plum assignment for the Times magazine.

The Times has a lavishly staffed Jerusalem bureau, led by Peter Baker and including regular Times contributors such as Isabel Kershner and Diaa Hadid. But when it came time for the Sunday Times magazine to profile Israel’s minister of culture and sports, Miri Regev, the Times, for some mysterious reason, chose to give the assignment to a reporter not on its regular payroll.

The nearly 6,000-word piece that resulted is, to put it kindly, an embarrassment, an error-filled, tendentious, anti-Zionist screed.

Let’s take it from the top, if you have the stomach for it. The Times reports that “Regev has become known for her provocations no less than for her nationalist fervor,” listing as examples: “She sometimes unfurls an Israeli flag during speeches…

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

Sunday, October 23, 2016

...Asking the Palestinians to wait until after the election is a reflection of the fact that Obama knows any move against Israel would hurt Hillary Clinton. But with only 18 days to go until the election, friends of Israel–both Republicans and especially Democrats–need to use this time to speak up against any last minute betrayal of Israel. Once Clinton has defeated a floundering Donald Trump, Obama thinks he will finally be freed of any political constraints. Barring a strong stand by Clinton in which she tells Obama to back down, Israel should expect the worst.

On the surface, the latest message to the Palestinian Authority from the Obama administration is no different from the past two decades of American policy: the U.S. will veto any resolution attacking Israel or demanding Palestinian independence without them first making peace with the Jewish state. But, as Haaretz reported, there was one significant caveat to the warning. They were told not to push for any such resolution until after the presidential election next month.

The “senior Palestinian official” who spoke of this message to Haaretz said PA leader Mahmoud Abbas had “no illusions and no expectations” that the U.S. wouldn’t veto any resolution they put forward. They also thought Washington might not have any plan of its own ready. “All we know is that there are ideas.” But the significance of those “ideas” is a function of the time frame enunciated by the administration.

If President Obama had no plans to use his last two months in office to launch some kind of a diplomatic initiative on the Middle East or to stick it to the Israelis and his longtime antagonist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then why would he even mention the election? Were the U.S. to keep faith with the Israelis, the Palestinians would just be told that there would be no change in American policy. Period. Abbas and the PA would be put on notice that, if they actually had any desire for peace or hope of future independence, they should do what they promised to do in the Oslo Accords: head back into direct negotiations with the Israelis.

In his eight years in office, President Obama has done everything he could to tilt the diplomatic playing field in the Palestinians’ direction. Had they ever negotiated seriously with Israel, they know they could count on Obama to back their stands and to pressure Netanyahu mercilessly. But despite the president hammering the Israelis and demanding that they accept the 1967 borders as the starting point for talks, the Palestinians have never played ball with Obama. Instead, they have spent most of these years refusing to talk. They torpedoed the negotiations the only time they deigned to show up by making a pact with Hamas and seeking to make an end run around the Americans by going to the United Nations.

...Despite that devastation, the Jews were so attached to the Land of Israel that they rebuilt their society, to the point of serving as a glass-production center that exported its wares throughout the Roman Empire. One of the most famous discoveries in this field is an edict by the Roman emperor Diocletian, carved on a stone tablet, setting the prices for what he called "Judean glass." Not "Palestinian glass," but “Judean glass.” Because everyone knew that Judea was the name of the region. That's what the Bible called it. That's what historians have called it for more than 2,000 years. That is, until UNESCO and the Palestinian Arab propaganda machine came along.

Stephen S. Flatow..
JNS.org..
21 October '16..

Archaeologists have uncovered yet more evidence of the ancient Jewish connection to Jerusalem--the very same week that UNESCO and the Palestinian Authority (PA) were declaring that Jews have no ties to Jerusalem. Talk about irony.

The latest discovery of a site where the Roman army assaulted Jewish forces guarding the outer walls of Jerusalem, during the Second Temple period, explodes the lies of the U.N. and the PA.

Consider this. The Romans were attacking Jewish forces. No evidence was found of any Palestinian forces in the area. The assault took place during the Second Temple period - the temple which the PA says never existed.

The newest findings confirm an account in the book, The Wars of the Jews, by the ancient historian Josephus Flavius in the first century C.E., which some historians previously doubted. Problem for the PA: Josephus never mentions Palestine or Palestinians.

Every time archaeologists dig in Israel, another piece of the Palestinian propaganda line crumbles. Earlier this year, scientists unearthed two ancient document seals in Jerusalem, dating to the late eighth century or early seventh century B.C.E. The script on the seals is Hebrew, not Arabic or any other language connected to Arabs or Muslims.

One of the seals bears the name of a man, "Sa'adyahu ben Shebnayahu." The other is the name of a woman, "Elihanah bat Goel" (or Gael). Jewish names. Not Arab or Muslim or Palestinian. The archaeologists noted the construction of the names were "in typical Judean fashion for this time period." Judean, not Palestinian. This is more vivid, indisputable evidence of a Jewish presence in the Land of Israel--more than 1,400 years before Mohammed founded Islam.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...You sometimes hear people dismiss outrage over jihadism and Islamist via the idiotic aphorism "One person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter." A much more meaningful observation might be: "One person's terrorist is another's non-story." That reflects the threat much more accurately. Apathy, distance and agenda-driven journalistic reporting mean that not enough people are willing to look and see what terror is, and what its practitioners seek to do. That enlarges the danger to all of us.

The targeted wedding hall, as it appears on its website

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
21 October '16..

People who have experienced terrorism the hardest way - personally, like us - tend to pay more attention than most others to acts of terror that don't get all the way to fruition. Also: to the way the news reporting industry tends to focus serious attention on stories where there is actual human blood resulting from terror attacks and incomparably less attention where blood is absent and the terrorists are thwarted before their evil plans make the transition from potential to hideous reality.

Unless you follow the Israeli news-reporting media closely, it's unlikely you will know that a mass-murder plot, energetically pursued by a gang of Palestinian Arab terrorists, failed to happen recently. That's because - other than in parts of the Israeli news channels - there has been almost no news-report attention paid to it. Not enough blood.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

Saturday, October 22, 2016

...And while UNESCO denounces “continuous Israeli aggressions,” the supposedly “moderate” Grand Mufti Abbas appointed ten years ago has not only denied the existence of Jewish temples and repeatedly threatened war in order to assert exclusive Muslim control of the Temple Mount, but he has also endorsed suicide bombings and approvingly quoted the infamous Islamic prophecy that features prominently in the Hamas charter, because it envisages a divinely ordained apocalyptical battle in which Muslims kill almost all Jews.

Petra Marquardt-Bigman..
Tower Magazine..
17 October '16..

“Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.”

That observation can be found at the beginning of the Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). What was true when UNESCO was established shortly after the end of a devastating world war remains true seven decades later, when UNESCO is busy fanning the flames of religious passions that could set all of the Middle East ablaze. With its recently-passed resolution that deliberately ignores the Jewish—and therefore also the Christian—connection to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, UNESCO has effectively endorsed the views of Mohammed Hussein, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who threatened a few years ago: “If the Israelis come here [to the Temple Mount] it will be more than an intifada…The whole region will be engulfed by war.” A year ago, the Grand Mufti repeated this threat, adding ominously that violence could “reach the entire world” if Jews, or any non-Muslims, were ever allowed to pray anywhere at “the al-Aqsa Mosque compound,” i.e. the entire Temple Mount esplanade.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

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About Me

I visited Hevron in November 2000 after the outbreak of the Rosh Hashanah War to see what could be done to assist in the face of the growing daily attacks on the community. After returning to work for the community in the summer of 2001, a bond and a love was forged that grows to this day. My wife Melody and I merited to be married at Ma'arat HaMachpela and now host visitors from throughout the world every Shabbat as well as during the week. Our goal, "Time to come Home!"